Two food related events in Hong Kong made me rethink some of my concepts about what I put into my body and how. Read on for one of the most researched blogs I’ve written in a while and in my opinion a must read for Vegetarians and Vegans.

Tasted too good to be healthy!

I was invited by a friend to her dad’s new Raw Vegan restaurant, Greenwoods Raw Cafe. It’s the first of its kind in HK and a first time for me. My sister was a raw vegan for awhile so I knew that meant no animal products and no cooking of basic vegetables and fruits. I’ll admit I came there expecting tasteless salads and was surprised to eat one of the most delicious meals in my life, especially the chocolate and vanilla desserts.

Simon Chau explained that it’s one of the basic ideas behind the place, to show people that raw vegans can eat well, although for him this is only a transitional stage leading toward eating a mono diet, one simple food in every meal or even day, like most animal do. Chau is considered an expert on healthy and green living in HK, and was able to answer all of my nosey questions with a smile. For instance is boiling the tea considered cooking? Do they freeze thing? What do they think about alcohol? (see end of blog for detailed answers)

Chau explaining the use of blender.

The first of the two indispensable tools for making tasty raw Vegan food would be a specialized dryer which removes moisture from food and hardens it without cooking. This allows them to make crispy crackers and bread like stuff. The second would be a blender without which they would have to chew around 700 grams of leafy greens a day which would take up quite some time and effort.

The second purpose of the place is to provide classes and a support framework for people trying this life style, making sure they do it correctly but also helping with social stigma they face. I admit I thought my sister had gone nuts when she told me about this. The biggest health mistake according to Chau is eating too much fats, like nuts and avocado instead of sugars. He recommends 80% natural sugar from fruits 10% protein and 10% fat. I couldn’t help but postulate that Chau’s high energies and huge smile might be explained by a constant ‘sugar high’.

Delicious!

Chau also invited us to a 10 course dinner later that week. The dinner was a combination of a musical stand up and persuasions to try this life style. Although some of the 10 dishes were just a leaf, or a tea spoon of dried Daikon, the main course of vegan lasagne was delicious. I learned a lot of things from this dinner, the main one being, if you feed people delicious gourmet food for free they will sit through anything!

5 days for a cracker!

I was still a little hungry after the meals but to be fair I came after long training sessions. They offer a monthly trial program which I might have been tempted to try especially if I could get cheap take away from the place. Unfortunately the catch really is the cost. Although the place is not for profit and has many volunteers, the cost of the organic material is very expensive and the preparation time is very high. The ingredients for an entire chocolate cake cost around 100 U.S $ and it takes 5 hours to make! The crackers take 5 days to prepare!!! This makes it a lifestyle a privileged few can explore and for me it is too much of a time/money investment.

An evolutionary perspective:

Raw foodists such as Chau argue that humans are the only animals that cook their food thus our bodies can’t be adapted for this kind of food. On the other hand my favorite historian Yuval Noa Harrai thinks discovering how to cook food is linked to the evolution of human intelligence because more calories (and time) were available for the brain to develop. These interesting facts caused me to go on a little research project. These are my conclusions:

Homo sapiens, better knows as us, appeared around 200,000 years ago. Other humanoids were here long before us, more than 2 million years ago and they were most definitely eating meat. Even modern chimpanzees, which diverged from us around 4 million years ago, are actually far from being vegan, and their diet consists of fruit, plants, nuts, seeds, roots, insects, and eggs.

When humanoids actually started cooking their food is a much more difficult question to answer. While there are well documented facts that humanoids have been using fire for 400,000 years (and perhaps before that), the time at which use of fire was actually mastered or when it was used to cook with is much debated and probably diverges much between group to group. It’s not like they had internet to pass on the information. Even Raw foodists will agree to put it around 250,000 years ago which still predates our species so in my not professional opinion cooking can’t be all that bad.

Agriculture is a baby compared to both these things and started around 10,000 years ago which is a strong argument against Gluten and milk. If you want the whole story check out this link.

The next step in evolution?music jam after eating.

An interesting fact people tend to ignore when using evolutionary arguments is, do we actually want to go back to living like our genetic ancestors? As the life expectancy was somewhere between 30-54 (if you survived the first 15 years) I’d have to say probably not. In fact life expectancy is constantly rising so we can’t be doing everything wrong can we?

The most interesting research I found revolves around the theory that growth of human life expectancy along with growth of brain, intelligence and longer time to maturity is all linked to a shift in our humanoid forefathers diet towards skill-intensive, difficult-to-acquire, high-quality foods. This created a natural selection for group corporation, intelligence and passing on knowledge.

Could Raw Vegans (especially in the intermediate gourmet stage) who most definitely are shifting their diet towards skill-intensive, difficult-to-acquire, high-quality foods be the next step in human evolution? Chau and those involved in the restaurant do seem to be almost of a different species, more cooperative and communicative, less aggressive than ‘main stream’ humans, caring for all life – and also super thin. I guess if they manage to use technology and research to get enough calories to stay healthy and pass on their genes they might have a chance. When it comes to evolution only time, and very much of it will tell.

Q&A About Raw Vegans
>Do they drink Tea?
Yes, but they don’t boil it. Tea is brewed in a special way and never goes above around 41 degrees Celsius which is the temperature enzymes break down and according to Chau food loses its nutritional value and becomes unhealthy. This is why Chau prefers the term “Living Food” instead of Raw Food.
>Do they Freeze food?
Chau rates food in a four grade system A to D or Healthy to Devilish. For him frozen food would be considered a B and he would prefer not to freeze his stomach and eats everything at room temperature but occasionally it’s ok and the restaurant does use this especially when making deserts.
>How about Alcohol?
Get’s a D- as in Devilish! Although if you are brewing your own by fermenting fruit Chau will look upon it more kindly and the Kafir (yeast starter) they use to make delicious vegan cheese out of nuts does have alcohol.
>Where does Vegan’s B12 Vitamin come from?
Chau explained that B12 comes from not washing their vegetables too much. I heard this before so I decided to research the subject a little.  B12 is only produced by bacteria and herbivores have these bacteria living in their digestive system producing B12 for them. By eating herbivores we can get their B12 especially if we eat their liver. Plants pulled from the ground and not washed may contain leftovers of B12 from the bacteria in the soil. And there is some research that the human intestinal tract itself may contain B12 producing bacteria, but it is unclear whether this is enough for the human body and most vegetarian/ Vegan associations will recommend taking supplements. Chau does not take any supplement and thinks that by eating raw vegan your absorption of B12 is maximized. He is also very honest in saying that more research is needed and that they are experimenting on themselves which is why a support framework is needed.